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Sadly, I don't think there's any way to make the public really care about this. For one thing, it's a sufficiently rare pain in the ass that virtually no one worries about what the latest nonsense from the TSA is on a day to day basis.

I also suspect many people actually do believe it makes us safer. Many others probably don't care one way or another, but if a politician were to seriously attempt to end the TSA, they would be branded as soft on terror so fast their head would spin.

This is true, but the current electoral system in the US isn't very responsive to public input. First past the post voting systems will tend to two parties, which makes voter opinion less effective since election winners will not have to form a multi-party coalition. This means that politicians and lobbyists can use wedge issues to divide voter attention and reduce the effectiveness of voter choice.

Corporations elect them, duh.